


Five Christmases and an Easter

by dogandmonkeyshow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Easter, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Men trying to talk about their feelings, Missing Scene, Surprise entrance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-26 22:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16690333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogandmonkeyshow/pseuds/dogandmonkeyshow
Summary: He needed to save John. Mary hadn't really needed to tell him that; he'd been a genius back then and would likely have figured it out for himself, eventually. But Mary had been right that Sherlock wouldn't know how. After all, he'd tried to save her once and look how that had turned out.And on top of that he needed to figure out what to do about Mr Pouchy-faced Serial Killer whose daughter had been almost as good as John. Maybe if he were really clever, he might even be able to figure out how to do both at the same time.





	1. Christmas Eve 2010

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PipMer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PipMer/gifts).



> Written for PipMer for the 2018 Holmestice Winter exchange.
> 
> PipMer, I tried to work in as many of your non-romance requests as I could. I realised I'd never written a 5+1 before, so grabbed that idea and ran with it, too.

Irene bloody Adler again, John mused as he stared at Sherlock's closed bedroom door. Why couldn't she just leave Sherlock alone?

John crept up to the door when he heard Sherlock's voice from the other side. 

Who was he talking to? The Adler woman? Then he distinctly heard Sherlock say, “She's dead,” and John knew that he must be talking to Mycroft.

John felt a bit torn between—well, not happiness, exactly—that she was dead, and a spine-jumbling, exhausted relief. He hadn't before realised that the prospect of her breaking in for a “chat” again had been worrying him as much as it obviously had been. John wondered at Sherlock's reaction, though. 

He continued to stare at the firmly closed door in front of him, knowing that Sherlock knew he was still there. The room beyond appeared to be silent, so Sherlock had ended his conversation with his brother. John risked leaning forward a little to hear—what, exactly. He wasn't sure what he expected, or (if he were honest with himself) wanted to hear coming from the other side.

As John sensed a silent movement of air behind him, he turned to see Molly standing at the other end of the short corridor, cycling through a range of her nervous ticks: patting at her hair, adjusting her dress, taking a gulp of wine, and giving him a quick, nervous flash of pained smile, than starting over again. After two cycles, she seemed to realise she was escalating John's anxiety with her own. “Is he—all right?”

John glanced at the door. “No idea.”

“Who's he talking to? Is it—her? The woman who owns that phone?”

“His brother, I think.”

“Oh.”

They stared at each other, dumb with uncertainty.

In the nine months since he'd moved in with Sherlock Holmes, John had never seen him so affected by anything, not watching Jeff Hope shot in front of him, not listening to the old woman murdered (with a dozen of her neighbours) in Yorkshire, not even the prospect of being blown to kingdom come by a lunatic desperate for Sherlock's attention. Why her? Why had she been the one Sherlock chose to fixate on? 

The entire time he'd known Sherlock, John had never before seen or heard anything from the man that even hinted at contradiction of his “married to my work” declaration that first night at Angelo's. Why was Sherlock so obviously upset at the realisation she was dead? He couldn't really have feelings for her, could he?

John gave Molly what he hoped was a reassuring smile, then returned to the now rather subdued party. Greg was patiently listening to Mrs Hudson prattle on about her sister's grand-daughter. Neither of them seemed to be taking much notice of Sherlock's odd change of behaviour. But then, they'd known Sherlock for years; perhaps flouncing off with no apparent reason was normal behaviour for him.

John's instincts told him _no_. This wasn't usual, and he had no good feelings about how it was going to end.


	2. Christmas Eve 2011

_Come out for a pint?_

John stared at his phone. The text wasn't a question; coming from Greg, though, it didn't feel like a command, exactly, either. It was the fourth text that Greg had sent that week. John's thumb hovered over it to swipe it away, like the others before it, but he hesitated. Which was fatal, he realised, as he opened it to reply with a somewhat mordant half-smile.

“Come on, love. Can't be that bad, can it?” the middle-aged cashier said as John shuffled to the front of the line.

“My best friend killed himself right in front of me five weeks ago,” blockaded the back of his mouth, almost cutting off his oxygen supply and setting off another of his near-panic attacks right there in the middle of Tesco Express. He could feel the tired, angry eyes of the people behind him boring into the back of his neck as he stood there, silently staring at the woman, so he just gave her a thin smile as he watched her ring up his tinned beans and milk.

He couldn't say it. Not just because it would have been inexcusably rude to dump that on an unsuspecting stranger; the last thing she needed on Christmas Eve was John guilt-tripping her for an attempt at friendliness. No, John hadn't been able to say it out loud to anyone since that horrific day at Bart's, and John knew if he even started there'd be no way he'd be able to stop, and the last thing he needed right now was a nervous breakdown.

 _Sure._ John replied to Greg's text as he stood outside the shop, bags swinging from the crooks of his elbows as he jabbed at his phone with a forefinger.

_Join the rest of the sad sacks down the pub or head over to mine?_

_Yours def_

_I'm off till NY, head over when you want_

_See you 5ish_

Waiting for the light to change at the corner of Baker Street and the Marylebone Road, John stared at the conversation on his screen. The bizarre normality of it felt like a sham. Greg was going to want to talk about Sherlock and he felt his anxiety level start to climb again, so he began to type a message begging off. Then he gave himself a mental smack; Greg of all people would know not to push. And John knew he was going to have to get past this eventually; it might as well be in the relative safety of Greg's flat.

When John arrived at Greg's, the heavy air of expectation he'd been fearing all the way there didn't materialise. 

“You haven't finished unpacking,” he observed as he looked around the living room. It was done up in classic “I just broke up with my wife of 20 years”: flat-screen telly taking up most of a wall, IKEA furniture and half-emptied boxes.

“Fuck off,” Greg muttered as he handed John a beer, then opened a huge bag of crisps. He dropped onto the sofa with a tired sigh.

After they'd each downed a significant slug of beer, Greg turned to John. “Sorry about the last minute—” he started.

“No, no worries. I didn't have any plans.” _Other than staring at the skull and drinking myself into oblivion._

“You don't see your sister over the holidays?”

“Nope. You going to your folks tomorrow?”

Greg shook his head as he swallowed. “They're in Greece. Not back until the 27th. I'll see them before I go back to work.”

They drank in silence now that the seasonally-themed pleasantries were over. They watched the Yule log on the television with the sound muted and John hoped to be able to knock back at least one more beer before things got angsty. He wondered who'd break cover first: John asking Greg how he was doing after the breakup, or Greg asking John how he was coping with Sherlock's suicide. If only to head the conversation off at the pass, John turned to Greg and was just about to ask, when Greg blurted out, “So, how are you? You okay?”

The man almost looked guilty for asking; he likely knew it was the last thing in the world John wanted to talk about. For a second John thought about doing the British thing and replying, “Okay, considering.” But he knew Greg would see through that, and if he'd be satisfied with platitudes he wouldn't have bothered asking.

“Shit, actually,” John eventually replied.

“That's fair. You seen your shrink since?”

The second topic on John's no go list. “Nope.”

“Okay. You should, you know.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“You need to talk to someone who didn't know him. Someone who isn't grieving him, too.”

_Oh._

John sat back into the corner of the sofa and let that sink in. Of course they all were. Mrs Hudson, of course; she'd only stopped spontaneously bursting into tears a couple of weeks ago. Molly had been avoiding him ever since that day, probably unwilling to be reminded by John's presence. And now Greg. All of them had known Sherlock for years before John stumbled into his life, but John had been so lost in his own grief that he'd been barely able to acknowledge theirs. He was a shit, an utter, utter shit.

“It's okay,” Greg said with a half-hearted attempt at a smile. “You were closer—”

“You've all known him longer—”

They paused, staring at each other's grim determination for a moment before retreating to the banal escape of the telly. While he allowed himself to be drawn into the visuals of the flames, John turned back to the theme that had been haunting him for weeks: had he really known Sherlock Holmes at all? Had the rapport he'd felt been real? And had he grabbed onto the man simply because he'd been the first person to offer John what he'd needed when he was at his lowest?

“Call it a tie,” Greg said after a few seconds of heavy silence.

John swallowed a startled chuckle. “Your marriage broke up; you win on penalties.” 

Greg inhaled beer and sputtered over both of them. “Yeah, maybe,” he muttered as he flicked beer off himself.

When they'd resettled, Greg returned to the matter John had mistakenly hoped he'd avoid. “So, you going to stay at Baker Street?”

“Can't afford the rent on my own. I mean, it's not like Mrs Hudson's pushing me out, but—” 

“Yeah. Sometimes you just need to leave it behind you.”

John surreptitiously glanced around the flat; was that why Greg had moved even though his wife had finally run off with her gym teacher for once and for all? Would it be better to leave Baker Street and the constant assault of memories and near-expectation that he might turn around one day and find Sherlock standing in the doorway, berating John for being so foolish as to believe Sherlock would kill himself over something as meaningless as his _reputation_? Was he grieving, or had he transitioned into wallowing? Would staying turn him into some sort of Miss Havisham, perpetually fixated on his loss while the world moved on around him? Was five weeks too soon to be making this kind of decision?

John hid his expression behind the beer bottle as hope and despair wrestled for dominance. “Yeah, maybe,” he muttered.

Greg leant over and clinked his bottle against John's. “To the end of a shit year.”

“End of a truly shit year,” John replied from the bottom of his fractured heart.


	3. Christmas 2013

John spent a lot of Christmas Day sitting in the corner and wondering what exactly it was that hovered in the back of his mind, clouding what should have been a great day. After all, he was in love and engaged to a fantastic woman that he was going to spend the rest of his life with. His best friend was back from the dead, and John’s grieving was over. To be replaced by a simmering anger that hadn’t yet abated, but that was still an improvement over the two years of sorrow. And the two most important people in the world to him seemed to adore one another. So why did he feel so disgruntled at the world?

He watched Sherlock flit like an entranced child around Mary as she prepared Christmas dinner. While John wasn’t unhappy that his best friend and his fiancé had instantly taken to one another—it was good to see that Sherlock’s animosity toward most of the previous women in his life had been about them, rather than the concept of sharing John—after six weeks it was still disconcerting to see them giggling together like old friends.

After his initial cluelessness about why John might have been a little peeved at him for pretending to kill himself by jumping off a building right in front of him then disappearing for two years, Sherlock had pulled in his horns a little. John suspected that Mary might have had something to do with that. The change was nice, but it was another source of irritation that a year and a half of living with the man had had no effect on Sherlock’s oblivious self-centredness, but a few pointed words from Mary had him scrambling to smarten up. On the other hand, being married to the one person in the universe Sherlock was willing to listen to was going to come in handy.

All in all it was good, though, or so John kept telling himself. Ella had had no advice on how to deal with the situation because he hadn’t been to see her since Sherlock’s return. He wondered what she thought of Sherlock suddenly popping up on the news, pretending his “death” had been nothing more than a bit of a lark. If he stopped avoiding her, John realised, maybe he’d find out, but he didn’t want to run the risk of her polite demands that he tell her what he felt about this remarkable turn of events. Because he wasn’t sure how he’d answer. And he didn’t want to acknowledge this sense of unease hovering around him or the guilt that his happiness at Sherlock's return was shadowed by provisos. 

“John, can you set the table?” Mary asked, yanking him out of his brooding.

“Yeah, sure.” As he pulled the wine glasses out of the cupboard, John surreptitiously watched Sherlock flipping through a sheaf of papers Mary had given him. Sherlock was frowning. “See anything you like?” John asked.

“None of these are appropriate. They’re all in the suburbs.”

John and Mary shared a look. “Yeah, so?” John replied as Mary turned back to the oven and pretended to baste the turkey.

“They’re much too far away. And I hate the suburbs.”

“Well, you’re not going to be living there, so that’s sorted then, isn’t it?” 

Sherlock turned to Mary. “You don’t want to live in—” He fluttered the print-outs of estate agent listings. “—the middle of nowhere, do you?”

“We can’t afford anywhere central. And I want a proper house with a yard, not a tiny mildewed box above a betting shop,” she answered over her shoulder before giving John a “please deal with your friend” look, as if she hadn’t been the one to provide the source of Sherlock's grievance in the first place.

“How long do you expect me to wait for you to commute in when we have a case?”

“As long as it takes, I guess. Most of them are dead already; it’s not as if they’re going to jump up and fly away while I take the tube in from Wimbledon, or wherever. And I'm not going to be able to work every case with you anymore, anyways.”

That suggestion stopped Sherlock in his tracks. John wondered what, exactly, Sherlock thought his marriage to Mary would entail. Did he think she was just an amusing accessory? Did he still think John would go back to putting Sherlock first? John didn't think it likely, considering that he'd spent the last six weeks both showing and telling Sherlock that wouldn't be the case, but for a self-identified genius, Sherlock could be slow on the uptake sometimes. 

Sherlock made a strange little harrumph-ing noise and rolled his shoulders in an abbreviated shrug. “You won’t be there.”

His tone wasn't his usual sham hurt; he seemed to be genuinely concerned John was going to abandon him. John wondered if this had happened to Sherlock before: a friend leaving him behind for coupledom. Perhaps it was time for a little reassurance. “Just think: you’ll be able to make as much of a mess of the flat as you like without me nagging you to clean up your experiments.”

“You could go visit once a week to nag,” Mary chimed in with a grin, which didn't diminish under John's mock scowl.

“Not the same,” Sherlock grumbled as he flopped onto one of the dining chairs. 

“The tube does run both ways, you know,” John teased, trying to hold his end up and get into the spirit of the day. “You could always visit.” At Sherlock’s grimace, John added. “You never know; it might do you good to get out of London every once in a while. Fresh air. Exercise. Speaking as your doctor— ”

“I just spent two years getting a lifetime’s worth of fresh air and exercise. It’ll take me months to recondition my lungs to London air again. I have no intention of setting that back with trips to ‘Wimbledon or wherever’.”

“You could get a dog,” Mary suggested.

“Yeah, thanks for equating me with a dog,” John riposted, making her laugh. He joined in the joke, though the memory of Moriarty calling him Sherlock's pet still stung a little.

“Mrs Hudson was very forthright on the subject of dogs when I moved in,” Sherlock grumbled. 

“Oh, well.” John shrugged. “We're serious, Sherlock. You can come visit any time you want.” He glanced to Mary and she nodded vigorously. 

“You'll have to put up with the wedding planning, though,” Mary added.

John assumed that would be the end of any notion of visits, and waited while Sherlock came up with a particularly cutting remark. Instead he replied, cautiously, as if trying the idea out in his head at the same time. “I think I might be okay with that.”

John and Mary shared another look, this time incredulous. “Really?” Mary asked.

“Of course.” Sherlock replied, his tone shifting from thoughtful to slightly aggrieved. “I've never planned a wedding before.” At the Watsons' stunned expressions he added, “One should always seek out new experiences.”


	4. Christmas 2014

“Did you bring your gun as I suggested?”

“Why would I bring my gun to your parents’ house for Christmas dinner?”

“Is it in your coat?”

“Yeah.”

“Off we go, then.”

“Where are we going?”

“Appledore.”

That was the moment John’s Christmas went to shit.

He’d spent most of the day keeping out of sight in Mr Holmes’ library to avoid Mary while he gathered up the nerve to talk to her, and stayed out of the line of fire of Mycroft and Mrs Holmes lobbing a lifetime's disappointments at each other like 18th century artillery barrages. So John had pretended to be interested in Mr Holmes' approximately 1000 books about trees while he squared the knowledge that he'd married a pathological lying murderer with the fact that he still loved her, regardless. It had almost, but not quite, made him nostalgic for the drink and loathing-soaked Christmases of his childhood.

By the time he and Mary had negotiated their reconciliation, Sherlock had, of course, brought his most recent and probably lethal plan into play. Then they'd gone off to have a nice, friendly, treasonous chat with the only man in Britain more dangerous than Mycroft Holmes. As a former soldier, John was a little sensitive about treason, but as the helicopter skimmed over the Gloucestershire countryside he reasoned that that was probably why Sherlock had kept the plan under his belt until it was time to pull it out, like some demented Father Christmas in a Mike Leigh-Tim Burton co-production directed by David Lynch. 

While John had missed the chase during Sherlock’s two year absence trying to destroy his nemesis’ operations, John hadn’t missed this “what the fuck does he think he’s doing?” feeling; there was a difference between excitement and insanity, after all. This was hardly turning out to be the Christmas John had envisioned, but what was he to do? It wasn't as if he could just stand back and let Sherlock walk into the lion's den alone, could he?

John looked across the shuddering, airborne oubliette and tried not to think of previous times he’d been in a chopper: Buckingham Palace had been a bit of a lark, but flashbacks of being airlifted to a base hospital in Afghanistan and willing himself to not bleed to death before he got there were something else entirely. He’d never felt comfortable with the aerodynamics-free vulnerability of helicopters, but at least no one was trying to shoot them out of the sky this time. Unless Magnussen had ground-to-air missiles sprinkled around his estate. Not that John would put it past him.

Sherlock was staring out the window, oblivious to John’s consternation at having allowed himself to be manipulated into this most recent bout of madness. Neither of them had said a word since they’d boarded the helicopter and John wondered at the odd intensity on Sherlock’s face. On someone else, John would have called it worry. The blasé fake jollity of their exchange in the garden was gone. 

These moments of solemnity had been more frequent in the year since Sherlock’s return. There was a time when John would have been disturbed by them, wondering what was wrong, but in these circumstances John felt slightly reassured by the fact that Sherlock seemed to at least acknowledge just how dangerous (if not ridiculous) their situation was.

He wondered how Mary was doing, back at the Holmes cottage. Considering the circumstances of his introduction to Wiggins, he didn’t share Sherlock’s faith in the man’s ability to take care of himself, much less anyone else. John didn’t know whether or not he should be hoping that Sherlock’s newest protégé had extensive experience drugging 8-month pregnant women, and if not, what might await him if they returned. When they returned, he corrected himself.

Watching Sherlock continue to stare at the countryside pulling them closer to their destination, John wondered if his friend was regretting this plan. Then he wondered if Sherlock regretted having to bring John along instead of Mary. After all, an assassin was likely to be more useful than a soldier when walking into this kind of showdown.

“Even if she weren’t indisposed, I wouldn’t have brought her,” Sherlock drawled at the window, as if it was the one who'd committed the gross insult of doubting him. “Magnussen would never let her in his home, not with their history.”

“He might,” John replied, picking up on the hint of amusement. “Just so his goons could shoot her.”

“Possibly. We don’t need the distraction.”

“Or, you know, the dead wife and baby.”

“That too. And he probably wouldn’t appreciate the reminder of cowering at her feet, begging for his life. Even if she did have a gun pointed at his head. That tends to overset even the most sociopathic.”

“Moriarty didn’t.”

“Moriarty knew I wasn’t actually going to shoot him.”

That was news to John. There was a far off look in Sherlock’s eyes at the memory of that night at the swimming pool, and probably everything else Moriarty-related since, and John suppressed the annoyance that rose up in him whenever the subject of the little Irish git turned up.. “So you knew, even then,” John said.

“Knew what?”

“That he’d become the most important person in your life.”

Sherlock snorted. “He was never important.”

“For someone who wasn’t _important_ , he’s consumed an awful lot of your attention in the last four years.”

“John—what I did, what I had to do had nothing to do with Moriarty himself. It was _necessary_. Never mistake necessity for importance. Like flossing,” Sherlock muttered as he turned back to the window.

“Is this flossing?”

“This is decontamination.”

“And I need to be here—why? Not that I’m—well, yeah I am kind of complaining.”

“Don’t you want to watch me take down the man who’s spent the last year threatening to destroy everything you value?”

John held back a nervous chuckle at the suddenly vulpine look on Sherlock’s face. “Uh, yeah, okay. I think I’m okay with that.”

“Good. Now just sit back and watch.”

"All right."


	5. Christmas 2015

Why were there mince tarts?

Sherlock stared at the plate perched on the midden of clippings and photographs in the centre of the kitchen table. He circled it, not taking his eyes off the rogue pastries. Why? His brain scrambled for an answer: why were there suddenly baked goods in his flat?

He curled up in his chair and watched to see if the pastries disappeared to wherever his brain had conjured them from. 

The next time he noticed, it was dark, so Sherlock stopped staring at the mystery pastries and returned to staring at the photos of Culverton Smith that peered at him through the gloom from where they papered the walls. All those pouchy eyes staring out of all those gurning faces: sly, smug, devious, lying, bastardly, _evil_.

He must have fallen asleep on the sofa, because he awoke the next morning curled up like a hibernating bear in his paper and string den. To his consternation the mince tarts were still there, mocking his inability to figure out where they’d come from. He scrabbled through a pile of photographs looking for the paper, the paper, the paper, his mind screamed at him, FIND THE PAPER!

He lost some time.

He was always losing time now, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.

Then he lost some more, which was really irritating, because it wasn’t as if there were an infinite supply of the bloody stuff, was there?

What had he been looking for again?

Then he found Mary’s DVD, which was typical, wasn’t it: look for one thing, and find the thing you actually really needed instead.

The next time he woke up the mince tarts were gone. Thank god for that, he thought. Maybe that meant it was time for another hit.

And then all the glorious sloooooowwwwwwnnnnneeeeessssssss. 

And then the world made sense again. And then he lost some more time. He really needed to stop doing that, he thought as he lay on the floor staring at the ceiling and wondering if he should put some clippings up there, too.

Maybe he should ask John. On second thought, maybe not. Turning his head slowly from side to side, Sherlock tried to imagine what John’s response would be to his case wall exploding over the entire flat, covering (almost) every surface, including the floor and every piece of furniture.

Maybe it would help the plan, though. Unfortunately, the one person who'd be able to answer that question—his client—was dead, and no matter how many times he watched that bloody DVD that had started it all, there weren’t any actual answers on it, just—things. Annoying—was that the word he wanted? No, not annoying. Not being able to think of the right word was annoying: that he was able to figure out. 

Deduce (ah, yes, _deductions_ ). He remembered those. He missed them. Then sometimes they came back, unexpectedly, like when what’s-his-name’s daughter with the enormous handbag and the gun came by and they went for a walk and Sherlock was able to be rude to his brother (always nice) and they ate chips. The chips had been nice, too. 

There’d been a deduction then, too. Oh, no, there had been two deductions; he must have really been on fire that night. She’d been an adequate audience, but she was no John. John was always the best audience; even when he was pretending to not be impressed he always was, usually despite himself. And now John was—Sherlock scrambled for a word that wasn’t trite or melodramatic and didn’t find one. Maybe the right words were all hiding with the paper. The paper she’d brought. There’s been writing on it, so maybe one of the writings was the right word for John that Sherlock couldn’t remember.

Sherlock rolled onto his side to see if the paper magically appeared before his eyes like the mince tarts had. The crinkle of the paper underneath him was amusing, so he rolled back and forth for a few seconds, then he got bored with that and stopped. 

He needed to save John. Mary hadn't really needed to tell him that; he'd been a genius back then and would likely have figured it out for himself, eventually. But Mary had been right that Sherlock wouldn't know how. After all, he'd tried to save her once and look how that had turned out.

And on top of that he needed to figure out what to do about Mr Pouchy-faced Serial Killer whose daughter had been almost as good as John. Maybe if he were really clever, he might even be able to figure out how to do both at the same time.


	6. Easter 2016

John struggled up the seventeen steps, dragging a tired, whining Rosie behind him. She was getting too big for him to carry, especially with two bags of shopping in his other hand. If Mrs Hudson had been home, he’s have left Rosie with her for a few minutes while he carried the shopping up to Sherlock’s flat. The last time he’d left her at the bottom of the stairs for a minute on her own, she’s been out the door and halfway to Lord’s before he’d caught her.

After thirty seconds on the landing, trying to dig his keys out of his pocket, the door opened on its own. Irene Adler stood there, watching him almost drop his bags, jaws agape as he goggled at her.

Rosie didn’t wait for the adults to sort themselves out; she scampered into the flat, calling out “Sh’luck!” as she barrelled down the corridor to his bedroom.

“How’d you break in this time?” John asked as he jostled bags and jingled his keys in his hand, then regretted letting her see his discomfort at the implication of her presence. 

“Oh, he invited me. He even told me you’d be popping by.” She turned to watch Rosie unearth her purple plastic dinosaur from under Sherlock’s chair. “Yours with the assassin?”

“Yep.”

She stepped aside to let him in. “Where are my manners.” 

“Same place as your conscience, I imagine,” John replied as he headed for the kitchen.

“It’s such a pleasure to know people who never change, Doctor Watson. It’s like time travel.” She curled up in Sherlock’s chair in such on obvious gesture of proprietorship that John couldn’t help smiling. 

“You know, I think this is the first time you’ve ever actually spoken to me.”

“Well, it would be churlish to ignore you, wouldn’t it?”

“And Sherlock’s not here.”

“You’re hardly what I’d call an adequate replacement, but it beats doing my nails again.” She paused to watch Rosie tear a Barbie’s arm off. “I see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Say what you want about Sherlock; say what you want about me, but you do not get to talk about my daughter. At all.”

“It’s not contagious, you know.”

“What? Being a pretentious—” John stopped himself before he said something Sherlock wouldn’t forgive.

She seemed to read the words in his mind, though, and smiled. “My, you are insecure, aren’t you? Don’t worry; you’re still his favourite.”

“What does that matter?”

“It matters to you. Your Sherlock replacement’s dead, so now you’ve gone back to the old well, haven’t you?”

“And your Sherlock replacement’s dead, so you’ve done the same.”

They stared across the flat at each other, John silently fuming that he was letting her run rings around him again. “Why are you here?”

“It's Easter, Doctor, the time of birth and renewal and all those good things.” She reclined and spread her arms in indolent benediction. “Consider me reborn into the world.”

John suddenly had a flashback to the scene in the film _Jason and the Argonauts_ where sown dragon’s teeth caused evil armed skeletons to erupt out of the ground. “Does Mycroft know about this rebirth?”

“Of course Big Brother knows. Who do you think got me into northern Pakistan in less than twelve hours to winkle her out?” Sherlock said from the doorway as he pulled off his scarf.

 _Mycroft, you devious fucking bastard_. That whole charade with the file and the phone and the stupid story had been to deceive him, not Sherlock. He turned back to Irene. “And he just let you back into the country. After everything you tried to do?” John scoffed at her in an attempt to cover his bright blush of anger at being taken in by the Holmes Trust, but he could tell she'd seen it.

“I’m not saying it wasn’t an expensive re-entry into the land of the living—” she started. 

“And Mycroft’s okay with this?” John asked Sherlock.

“Since when do you care what he thinks about anything?” Sherlock asked, incredulous.

“Well, yeah he—” John glanced over to Irene, wondering just how much Sherlock had told her about the rescue caper and the brothers’ blatant lies to John about it. He made a mental note to let Mycroft know exactly what he thought of that the next time he saw him. Not that Mycroft would care, but it never helped to let the man get away with everything scot free. John turned back to Sherlock. “Well, yeah, he, um.” He glanced back to Irene. “Yeah, whatever. Don’t know why I care,” he muttered as he began to fuss with the shopping.

A moment later Sherlock joined him and proceeded to rootle in the bags. “You forgot the biscuits again.”

“If you want biscuits, put them on the list.”

“Biscuits don’t need to be on the list; biscuits are always assumed.”

“You could always do your own shopping, you know.”

“Why, when there's a Tesco's next to the clinic?”

“I—” John dropped his head and fumed for a second. Then he turned to Sherlock and once he’d caught his eye, combined a faint head tilt in Irene’s direction with a questioning expression.

Sherlock stared back at him, jar of curry sauce in one hand and loaf of bread in the other. By the defensive set of his shoulders, John could tell he was unsure about what he was going to say next and John wondered if this was when the blow would fall.

“Considering what you said to me on my birthday, I'm finding your attitude a little hypocritical,” Sherlock said in an undertone, with one eye over John's shoulder.

John's mind scrambled back to dry land, then cast back to that day and waded through the emotional aftershocks to try to find Sherlock's point. “What—I said—what did I say?”

Sherlock took a step closer, leant over and whispered, “Go after her.” He stood up and stared down his nose at John. “For the first time in my life I've taken your advice and now you criticise me for it.” 

“I wasn't—what are you talking about? What have I said that could possibly be considered criticism?” John hissed back at him, aware of the pair of eyes scouring over them from across the flat. He and Sherlock stared at each other, almost nose-to-nose, each waiting for the other to back down first.

“Should I leave, let you two work things out in private?” 

John turned; Irene had snuck up on him.

“Um—” John stumbled over his surprise.

“Don't leave on his account,” Sherlock replied.

“I'll call you tomorrow.” She was back to ignoring him, John saw. There was a warm familiarity to it that was almost reassuring. A moment later she pulled on her furs and sashayed out the door.

John turned back to Sherlock. “So when were you going to tell me? Or is this—”

“I wasn't aware I needed your permission—”

“Oh, stop trying to play martyr. I didn't mean it like that.” They glared at each other over the shopping, like a middle-aged couple in a mediocre kitchen sink drama. “So. You two are—” John began.

“Are what?”

“You know. Together.”

“I can't believe you forgot your conversation with her at Battersea.”

“Er, no.” _Well, maybe a little. And if I did, so did you._ She had implied—what, exactly, John wondered now.

Sherlock gave a little hum of false contemplation. “A doctor who doesn't know what a lesbian is. If that's the quality of medical education in this country, no wonder the NHS is in the state it's in.” 

John ignored the jibe. “Which doesn't explain why you've been—whatever the hell it is you've been doing with her all these years.”

Sherlock ignored the accusation. “There's lots of different kinds of love, John.” He glanced across the flat, to where Rosie was making RAAAWWRRRR sounds at the tops of her lungs while her armless Barbie rode the dinosaur across the coffee table. Sherlock began to rearrange body parts in the refrigerator to make room for the milk, firing, “You should know that, of any of us,” over his shoulder.

Well, there was nothing to say in reply to that, was there. John spent two and a half seconds wondering why he was standing there, putting up with Sherlock Holmes, of all people, schooling him on the nature of love. 

“And that's, I don't know, enough for you?” John asked.

Sherlock stood upright in the open door of the refrigerator, his back still to John while he (presumably) contemplated his answer. After a second or two he turned. “It is what it is.” Then he shrugged and continued putting the shopping away.

John couldn't decide if the realisation saddened him or not. Sherlock didn't seem to be; but then, he could be remarkably opaque about his true feelings when he wanted to. John decided that yes, he was a little sad that his best friend was happy with what John thought of as second best, possibly never having what John had (until recently) had in his life: love with someone who was worthy of him. And John wanted that for him. But if Sherlock was content with this purely intellectual love affair with Irene, then who was he to gainsay him? On a purely selfish note, Irene not becoming a part of their daily lives was hardly a sacrifice, John thought.

While he watched Sherlock settle at the table, dragging a clamouring Rosie onto his lap as he began to prepare slides, John wondered what Mary would have thought of Irene. Would she have accepted her as part of their little cadre of misfits, or would she have seen her as competition? Try as he might, John couldn't see the two women getting along; they were both too assured of what they each saw as their rightful place at the front of any pack. Now he thought of it, John realised it was kind of telling that he and Sherlock were both attracted to the same kind of woman: smart, strong, independent, and possessing a thoroughly flexible approach to what ordinary people called morality.

“Did you ask her to come back?”

Sherlock obviously read more into the question than John had intended as he looked slightly uncomfortable with it. “No. She approached me. Well, we've kept in touch.”

“I know.” John remembered the conversation in January, on Sherlock's birthday. “If the two of you aren't—you know—”

“She's always been interested in detective work.”

“And detectives,” John added with a smirk that elicited a mirror one from Sherlock, who then glanced down to Rosie.

“You have other priorities.”

“True. But that doesn't mean I don't have time to help with cases. I want to. I'm never going to not want to, you know.”

Sherlock paused to toy with his slides for a second or two, obviously uncomfortable with at least one aspect of the conversation. “She isn't here to replace you.”

“I know. Is this want you want, though? Really?”

“Why not? She and I are—friends, I suppose, of a kind. She's no Mary, but—” He shrugged again as he brushed an errant curl off Rosie's forehead.

John hid his heart clench behind a poor attempt at a joke. “A lot less gunfire involved. Not a bad thing.”

“Perhaps.” 

John toyed with the edge of a cushion while Sherlock shuffled slides aimlessly. “So, what's the plan?” John eventually asked.

“No plans. Work.”

“So you and Irene aren't—”

“Nope.”

“No running around on a case today?”

“Maybe later.”

“Try not to shoot anyone.”

“It's Easter John; shootings are reserved for Christmas.”

“Everyone's got to have a Christmas tradition, I suppose.”

“I believe it takes three to make a tradition.”

“You're behind, then.”

“One needs to choose one's targets carefully.”

“Of course one does.” John nodded, keeping a solemn expression on in the spirit of the game. “Any good prospects?”

“None that come immediately to mind. In a pinch there's always Mycroft, so I'm never entirely at a loss.”

“The family that slays together stays together.”

The moment he said it, John instantly regretted it, considering the events at Sherrinford only six weeks before.

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow at him, obviously reading his regrets and their cause, and John was glad he didn't get called out on them. Neither of them spoke as the brief spike of tension dissipated, and John sensed that Sherlock was as unwilling as he was to risk derailing that by speaking.

While Sherlock returned to his work, John retreated to the television. As he flipped through the channels he sensed the room filling with ghosts as the evening light departed. He only half-listened to the drone of the telly.

It took him a while to notice them. At first it was just snippets; then they grew into phrases. Then he was remembering entire past conversations, arising from his memories and drowning out the telly. As he focused on them, the layers of memory wrapped around him, warming him like the whispers of loved ones.

So much of the best of his life—and some of the worst—had happened in this room. The walls were saturated with his life.

As Sherlock worked at the kitchen table, Rosie occupied with an empty petrie dish, the quiet invoked the echoes of a thousand other quiet dark evenings in this room, and John recognised the truth of Irene's comment to his very bones. It was time travel. This room was their Tardis, their shared universe, the native land of their friendship. 

It had been a long time since John had thought it was all just the cases, the chase, the deductions, the battles the two (and for a while the three) of them had fought against crime and human folly. And while they were what had brought him and Sherlock together in the first place, it was this, this—whatever the hell it was right this very instant—that was the glue that held it all together and had for years while the chaos around them distracted and amused them.

John wondered at his complete lack of interest in trying to define it, though. It was love, obviously. The kind of love that connected best friends, and kept them at each others' sides through even the grotesque ordeals he and Sherlock had been through. But it wasn't really worth thinking about, in the end. It just was. And so it would always be. And John wouldn't have it any other way.

~.~


End file.
